The following is an introductory essay I use in many of my classes to approach the questions raised by Science and Scripture. At the end I have included discussion questions based on the essay.
Ask the animals, and they will teach you.
The birds of the air, and they will tell you.
Ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you;
And the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know that
The hand of the LORD has done this?
In God's hand is the life of every living thing
And the breath of every human being.
(Job 12.7-10)
There is grandeur in this view of life,
with its several powers,
having been originally breathed
into a few forms or into one;
and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity,
from so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful
have been, and are being, evolved.
(Charles Darwin, Origin of Species)
When studying the Story of God written in Scripture, one of the major questions that is often raised is: How does this Story relate to other stories that try to explain the world we live in? There are many stories found in other worldviews that seek to explain the world. But there is one other really big Story that has been accepted by most of the world since the 1800's: The Story of Evolution as told by scientific investigation. Both scripture and science speak of how humanity came to be, but they use different language to talk about it. Thus, what they say often sounds very different.